The Resurrection Men
In 1822, a Middleton man kept the body of his infant daughter for six
weeks at home before allowing her to be buried. He wanted to be sure that
decomposition had set in and was sufficiently advanced to avoid the interest of
the Resurrectionists.
On the face of it, you might imagine the Resurrectionists a minor
religious sect. When you think of a man keeping a dead child at home until her
body had begun to rot, you might think something pretty ghoulish was going on.
Not so!
As soon as you say, `the Resurrection Men`, it begins to take on a more
sinister note. The soubriquet is grimly ironic - this was nothing to do with
intimations of immortality. It was to do with the trade in dead bodies, the
provision of cadavers for anatomical purposes
in the colleges of medicine. And the man who kept his daughter`s body at
home? He wanted to be sure that her mortal remains would be beyond usefulness,
hoping by this means to feel assured that she would lie peaceful in her grave.
The practice was, it seems, both widespread and lucrative. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, the only bodies legally permitted for medical use were those whose
crimes merited a sentence of punishment `by execution and dissection`. However,
as the number of capital sentences fell and as the needs of science increased,
there was a problem of supply and demand, and this is where the resurrection
men came in.
What were the risks?
Remarkably few.
However morally outrageous it might seem, the theft of a body was
classed as a `misdemeanor` and not a `felony`, and as such carried a much
lighter punishment. It was also, it seems, something on which the authorities
tended to turn a blind eye.
The term body-snatching was also commonly used, though again this is
misleading. The bodies weren`t snatched, as one might snatch a handbag; though individual practitioners had, no
doubt, their own tricks of the trade, the bodies were secretly retrieved from
their resting place, usually at night, and, with equal stealth, conveyed to
their destination in the anatomist`s laboratory or his lecture room.
Grave-robbing is another term again. This refers not to the taking of
bodies but to the theft of jewelry or any other precious items buried with the
deceased. It is quite likely, it would seem reasonable to guess, that one went
with the other! Though a resurrection man might think twice, as the punishment
for such thefts was classed as a felony – more serious than stealing the body
itself!
The Burkers [after Burke and Hare] brought a new dimension to the trade,
for they made light work of supplying the bodies by murdering them rather than
waiting for them to die and be buried!
It was The Anatomy Act of 1832 which provided for unclaimed bodies and
those whose relatives gave permission, to be given over for medical purposes,
thus putting an end to the Resurrectionists` trade, though leaving them with a
place in the more macabre pages of our history.
John Wheatley`s novel “Canky`s
Trade” is set in the south Lancashire township of Middleton in 1811. Lord
Byron, pursuing a legal entitlement which he had in nearby Rochdale, stayed at
Hopwood Hall, close to Middleton in September of 1811, and the story is partly
to do with Byron`s impact on the people he meets there. 1811 was also a year
when the infamous Luddites were at large, and whose destructive resistance to new machinery
prompted the Frame-breaking Bill, which Byron was to oppose in the House of
Lords. And it was in the middle of the period when Oliver Canky, sexton of the
parish churchyard, plied his `trade`. Throw in a young local weaver and poet,
Sam Bamford, a murdered prostitute and some strange goings on in the cellar of
the isolated house of Canky`s friend, `Owd Scrat`, and there you have the basic
ingredients of the story….
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